It's No Fun When You're Doing It Solo
by Smiley612
Summary: "What's wrong is that Ally died last night ." / Austin regretted ever having thought he could have a solo career ./ Oneshot / "How terrible it is to love something that death can touch ."


"Okay, boys, Trish and I are going out," Ally called out to Austin and Dez, who were tossing a football back and forth across the store.

"Kay!" was Dez's response, but Austin caught the football and ran over to his girlfriend, giving her a peck on the cheek without a word. Ally, in response, blushed, and walked out of Sonic Boom.

Austin tossed the football to Dez.

* * *

**v v v**

* * *

"Apple."

"Banana."

"Carrot."

"Okay, Dez, we need to name more interesting things than fruit," Austin pointed out, chuckling, as him and Dez relaxed in the practice room. "Like...animals, or movies, or actors, or something."

"Fine," Dez grunted. "DiCaprio."

"Elephant."

"Ferrari."

"This is not going to work," Austin laughed again, pushing himself off the chair and checking the fridge to look for something to eat. "We'd just end up killing each other over who gets to say 'Megan Fox'. Who, by the way, is the hottest chick I've ever seen."

"Ditto," Dez agreed, and Austin tossed him a coke from across the room. He sat down next to his friend, popped his soda, and they took a sip simultanisouly.

A few minutes past and they two boys finished their sodas and crushed their cans like they usually did; but when Austin threw his can by the clock on the wall, he insticually looked up and saw the time was 5:36; eight hours after Ally and Trish had originally left.

"When do you think they'll get back?" he wondered, and Dez shrugged.

"Dunno," he answered. "Hey, you think if I tried really hard, I could summon my can from the fridge and refill it with my mind?"

* * *

**v v v**

* * *

Another four hours proved that Ally wasn't to return.

"Come on!" Austin groaned, pacing back and forth in front of the counter. "Where is she?"

Ring.

_No one answers on the first ring. _

Ring.

_The call probably hasn't even been transferred yet. _

Ring.

_She's either ignoring me or she hates me. _

Ring-

_"Austin, why do you keep calling me?"_

He tried to hide his relief as he answered, "You've been out all day! You haven't even called me, like you usually do. Why haven't we talked? It feels weird."

Ally sighed, but to Austin's surprise, he didn't hear any background noise, which disappointed him; he kind of thought he'd be able to tell where Ally was by the background noise, like if Trish was yelling at the salon employee or if Trish was ordering another burger. But, what shocked Austin even more, was that he didn't hear Trish at all and Ally almost sounded kind of upset.

"Well, Austin, I'm sorry," she apologized, and Austin suddenly got an extreme urge to tell her that no, he was sorry and they shouldn't have fought because they were partners and best friends and lovers. "But I can't come home right now. I'm on the road. Oh, there's a cop behind me! I gotta go. I'll see you when I see you. Love you. "

And she hung up without warning. Austin wasn't sure if she was telling the truth or not, being Ally wouldn't see Austin when she saw him, because she wouldn't see him ever again.

"Yeah," he said, into the empty receiver. "Love you."

* * *

**v v v**

* * *

He went to sleep that night, thinking that his and his girlfriend's fight last night was absolutely unreasonable and uncalled for; so he woke up, got dressed, brushed his teeth, slipped on a jacket, grabbed his skateboard and was out the door in less than ten minutes.

He maneuvered all the way to the mall and into Sonic Boom, only to see no one he recognized at the counter, or even in the store at all.

There were, however, costumers. Austin opened the door, walked inside, and weaved through the crowd of people; when he saw a person standing with a music book in front of the counter, waiting for someone who would never come, Austin took action and collected the person's money gratefully.

"Hello?" he called out, grabbing a few random people's attention, but he brushed them off as no one he knew personally responded to him. "Ally? You here?"

No answer. "Trish? Dez? Mr. Dawson? Mrs. Dawson? Lester? Penny?"

He climbed the stairs quickly, his heart pounding in and out of his ears. He had this lingering suspicion that something bad had happened; he didn't know why, but the fact that no one was attending the store just made Austin feel worse. Someone had to have opened the store for people to be in it.

At the top of the stairs, he slowly opened the practice room door with a reeeeeeeaaaaaaaaak, then scanned the room, only to find the only occupant was the old piano that Ally and he had shared many moments with, touching hands and creating song lyrics.

Holding the cell phone in his hand, he slowly moved over to the black grand piano, placing his hand on it, thinking of all the good times he'd have with the instrument to come, not thinking about the future. It was what Austin did; he lived in the moment, made choices when he thought of them, and did what he wanted with no regrets. If you didn't do what you wanted, you'd always be unhappy.

He dialed Dez's number first after removing his hand from the piano. He didn't think much of it when the first ring passed; no one picked up on the first ring. It probably wasn't even transferred.

Then the second ring passed, and by then Austin knew it was transferred. Dez always had his phone with him, but Austin thought he could have possibly left it somewhere, or was doing something like decorating a wedding cake again. His voicemail was heard through the phone.

"Hey, bud," Austin said, leaning against the piano and looking at the closed, wooden door. "It's me, obviously. Well - you have Caller ID, just like everyone else in the world does. So you know it's me.

"Sorry," he quickly apologized. "I don't know what's wrong with me today. Something must be up, I guess. Well, when you get this message, call me pack, kay? No one's here at Sonic Boom and I don't think I can handle all the customers by myself," he joked, then hung up the phone so he wouldn't have to embarrass himself anymore than he already did.

Next, he decided to call Ally. Having his girlfriend's phone number memorized by heart, he pressed the buttons quickly with his fingers and tapped the "call" button.

And instead of ringing, it went straight to voicemail.

"Hey! This is Ally. Give me your name and number and I'll try to call you back! Bye!"

The standard voicemail. And again, Austin didn't think much of it. Her phone could have been off or dead or something. So since no one was answering, he switched and called Trish; she was the first one to pick up on the third ring.

"What do you want, Austin?" she snapped.

"Well, someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed," he attempted to make a joke, and a stupid one at that; but even after it failed, even after it crashed and burned, that ominous feeling that something wasn't right still lingered in the air.

Trish huffed. "Stop playing around, Austin!" she exclaimed, and Austin heard footsteps from the other line as he moved the phone from between his shoulders to his hand.

"Whats wrong?" he asked her, blocking out the chit-chat from the other side of the door.

"What's wrong?" Trish repeated his question back to him, incredulously leaking through her sarcastic tone. "What's wrong? I'll tell you what's wrong, but nothing's right. What's wrong is that I was crying so hard last night that Dez actually had to come over to calm me down. What's wrong is that I didn't even think to go near my phone. I'll tell you what's wrong, Austin Moon."

He felt his world crash around him.

"What's wrong is that Ally died last night."

* * *

**v v v**

* * *

Something was very wrong.

There was no rain at Ally's funeral. Not even clouds. Instead, the sun was brightly shining down on Miami, brightening the day of hundreds, not even knowing that someone who hadn't deserved to die did die.

It _should_ have been pouring rain. Clouds _should _have covered the sun. The sun _should_ have hidden, but instead its bright UV rays were protruding upon Austin's sunglasses, as he had to watch his girlfriend be lowered into the ground on a very sunny afternoon.

He didn't even get to say goodbye, unless you count that one phone call before the drunk driver smashed into Ally's Toyota a goodbye. They had told each other "I love you"...not for the first time, but instead the last time. They fought before she died, and Trish had to convince him more than once that their phone call was _minutes_ before the accident, that it was the drunk driver's fault, that he was under the influence and was reckless and idiotic and didn't give a thought to the fact that he killed someone who had a life, who had a loving boyfriend and friends and family who didn't want to see her go so soon.

He wouldn't see her for a while; he wouldn't see her again, until Austin was an old man, warm in his bed, and he'd travel to wherever Ally, Trish and Dez were, sure that their souls would all rest in the same place, in Sonic Boom, where they all met and formed the strongest friendship anyone could ever imagine.

He didn't even go to the wake, because it was only three days after her death and Austin was still a mess. He didn't know how he'd handle seeing his girlfriend, his best friend, his songwriter, just lying there in a casket, her eyes closed, not knowing she was holding a bouquet of flowers and not knowing that her boyfriend was kneeling right in front of her. He stayed home with Dez and cried, cried over the fact that death had touched yet another victim, that Ally Dawson was dead. Gone. Ended. Stopped. Finished. Ceased. Finalized. Over.

Poof.

* * *

**v v v**

* * *

"Austin," Jimmy complained, walking into the room, "please stop tapping your pencil against the desk! I can hear you from my room, and it's really annoying me."

The tapping suddenly stopped, and Austin realized just how accustomed he'd grown to that sound. The room suddenly seemed empty without the tapping. "Sorry," he muttered, laying his head in his hands on the table.

Jimmy approached him and placed a comforting hand on his back. "I know how hard this is for you," he announced, rubbing his back in a circle. "And I understand. But if you want to continue your career, you're going to have to write this song yourself, since you don't want to hire another songwriter."

Jimmy didn't understand why he didn't want to hire another songwriter, but Austin knew very well why. When Trish and Dez were making that movie on them and Austin had to admit he considered using another songwriter when Ally overcame her stage fright and was looking for a new career, she seemed so hurt; more hurt than Austin was over the fact that she had doubted him and his career. If he hired another songwriter, he'd feel like he was betraying Ally, and he didn't want to do that; not after everything he'd been through in the past month.

"I know," he admitted, his head still in his hands, "but I don't know how to write a song. I can't rhyme and nothing good ever happens to me anymore. I don't really want to write a song about how I read I Am Number Four and liked it or that I watched Titanic without Ally for the first time and cried my eyes out," he admitted lamely, and Jimmy weakly chuckled.

"Just write what you feel." Jimmy removed his hand from Austin's shoulders. "Austin, I know you're sad, and that's understandable. When I lost Kira's mother, I was devastated! I didn't know what to do with myself. But I got over it, I went on to make a whole record-deal thingamabob, and then I hired you.

"Life goes on, is what I'm saying," Jimmy's I'm-giving-you-advice-so-you-better-use-it tone was leaking again. "You can't dwell on a person's death forever. They'd want you to move on."

Jimmy left Austin to him and his pencil, not even realizing there wasn't a notebook in front of him.

"What if I don't want to move on?" Austin muttered to himself, burying his head in his arms again. "What if I don't want to write my own songs? What if I want Ally back, what if I'd do anything to go back in time and be there in the car with her? What if I can't do this alone?"

He took a deep breath and wrote the word "The".

"I like The," he muttered, blinking the sleep out of his eyes. "That could be the song name. Everyone says The like eighteen hundred times a day. It could mean anything. Yeah, I like The." (But Jimmy didn't.)

Trish and Dez were working the shop today; Lester was out of town with Penny. Austin knew it had something to do with their daughter being dead, but no one honestly cared.

"The...the summer we met," he continued, taking his pencil and writing on his skin, as he was too lazy to get up and go find a notebook. "We started as friends."

_"But there's still one more thing that bothers me. Why did you freak out so much when you thought I had a crush on you? Am I that horrible?"_

_"No, Ally, you got it all wrong, you're awesome. I did all that stuff because you're my friend, and I don't wanna jeopardize that."_

"I can't tell you how it all happened," Austin said to himself, but stopped immeadiately, knowing that he'd just sing "I Think About You" again, and it was a song written by Ally, and he'd just send himself into a mini-depression and he'd cry and almost break the piano again, knowing that he'd never feel Ally's soft hands brushing against his again, or touch her soft lips, or watch her blush when he said something totally-not-smooth but she thought it was adorable anyway.

"Oh my God!" he complained, throwing his hands up and leaning against the chair. Austin had never been this lonely, and before he met Ally and Trish, he only had Dez, and Dez was almost never around because he was busy with flimmaking and crap. Austin was alone for much of his life, but he never really thought about how lonely he was until now, when he really was alone, when he was doing it solo.

It really was no fun when you were doing it solo.

After minutes of pouting, of wishing his shy songwriter was here to say "Austin, bury and carry actually rhyme!" he picked his pencil up off the floor and erased "I Think About You", ready to start over. Ally always told him that when she had writer's block, she wrote a short essay about something she liked to get her back into the thick of songwriting.

Austin had such a thing: there was a video game, Yoshi's Story, that he always played with Dez; it was such a happy game that even the grumpiest of people would play it.

He grinned to himself as he picked up the pencil and started to write his short little essay.

_I really like Yoshi's Story. It's a fun game that has eggs in it. Who doesn't like eggs? Eggs are great. I wish that I had eggs all the time. Baby Bowser is a mean guy, and I don't like him, in fact I don't like him so much, that I'm writing a run-on sentence because I just don't want to bother stopping to put a period because I hate him so much. Just a second, I need to eat a donut. Okay, I'm done, that was good. I should eat donuts more often. I heard donuts give you cancer, is that true? Oh well, I guess I'm getting cancer because I love me some donuts. I'm gonna start writing in larger letters so that I can finish this faster. I'm gonna write thicker too, because that's just fun. How many Yoshi's are in this game? I can count six. One, two, three, four, five, six. I can count higher than that, but I don't see any more. So that would be cheating. Yoshi A, Yoshi B, Yoshi C, Yoshi L, Yoshi K. Now I know my ABC's, next time won't you sing with me? Pretty please? So anyway, Yoshi's story is a game, the end._

Groaning, he crumpled his essay into a ball and tossed it in the trash. If he presented that to Jimmy, all he would do was laugh and presume Austin was playing a practical joke on him, while in reality that was the best Austin could do.

It continued for another couple of weeks; Austin would write another essay, then throw it out, then try to write another song, but the only thing that could come out of him was songs written by Ally. He wrote "You Can Come to Me", but Jimmy had to remind him that he didn't write that song, not to mention it was already written; he also had to remind Austin that "Not a Love Song", "Double Take", "A Billion Hits", "I Think About You", was also written by Ally and was already written and published on his album.

He didn't know what it could be.

Sighing, he leaned back in his chair again. He thought about the times he shared with Ally, Dez, and Trish, how they were always the best; he'd had his share of drama, but he'd also had funny times, like when he had to admit he was afraid of umbrellas or Katy Perry CD's or Taylor Swift perfume. He'd laughed when Trish bitchslapped Dez or come into the room with yet another job, but no one ever cared, because they liked seeing all the jobs Trish could get at the mall.

While there was one less on Team Austin & Ally, it would always feel empty. Neither Trish, Dez, or Austin could write a song, and without Ally, they would crumble and die.

There was no more Pickes & Pancakes, no more Singer & Songwriter, no more Rocker & Writer, and no more Austin & Ally, because Ally was dead and he was alone and he was doing it solo.

**v v v**


End file.
